On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vehemently denied a Wall Street Journal report, based on a White House leak, that Israel spied on U.S. negotiations with Iran and then fed what it gathered to Republicans in Congress.

U.S. officials have finally publicly stated a fact about Israel many already feared was true; researchers are starting to study the effects of the Internet on education; and Latin America’s leaders are taking Venezuela’s side in its recent rift with the United States. These discoveries and more after the jump.

Now that Leonard Nimoy is most unfortunately no longer with us, Barack Obama is the primary exemplar in American popular culture of the maddeningly calm, excruciatingly logical way of speaking that will forever be associated with the Vulcans and Mr. Spock.

With other arguments against the Democrats vanishing, only by turning the debate toward Iran can the Republicans survive. Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was just a political stunt to try to achieve that end.

“The biggest losers [in Israel’s decision to re-elect the Likud Party],” writes the former Truthdigger of the Week, “will be all those on the planet who yearn for a world based on social and economic justice, environmental sanity, peace and non-violence, and genuine caring for the peoples of the world.”

Observers in the Arab press who contemplated the victory of far right Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu in the Israeli elections express emotions from “concern and anxiety” to out-and-out horror at the potentially destructive impact it will have on the region.

Ayman Odah, leader of the Joint Arab List, the party representing Palestinian-Israelis and elements of the Israeli left, responded late Tuesday to the news that Israelis of Palestinian descent came out in droves to vote.

Whether Benjamin Netanyahu gets another term as prime minister of Israel or not, he will be remembered for the damage he has done to the interests of the United States as well as those of his own country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under extreme pressure over the real possibility that he will lose the March 17 elections, made a powerful appeal to his far right-wing constituency by vowing that he would keep millions of Palestinians stateless.

The conditions in Gaza this winter, as described by the United Nations and The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, are not only heartbreaking but inhumane. It’s no wonder many Palestinians are predicting another war with Israel.

During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s impassioned plea to Congress to protect Israel by opposing diplomacy with Iran, he failed to mention that Israel has an arsenal of 100 or 200 nuclear weapons.

For “Prime Minister Netanyahu and the hawks in Congress, mostly Republican, the primary goal is to undermine any potential negotiation that might settle whatever issue there is with Iran,” the renowned political commentator and linguist tells Amy Goodman on a recent episode of “Democracy Now!”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is stridently and continually harping on the alleged dangers of Iran to Israel’s security. And yet, there are, in fact, more pressing dangers to Israel than Iran’s nuclear reactors.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes a bid to thwart President Barack Obama’s foreign policy toward Iran, the Iranian press is reacting to the wrench Netanyahu is trying to throw into negotiations over Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program. But for some odd reason, American mass media are almost never interested in what critics of the United States are saying.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly believes he can openly side with the Republican Congress against President Barack Obama without facing any consequences. However, Meir Dagan, the former head of Israeli intelligence, sees danger.

Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer and the other “Left, Right & Center” panelists discuss the applause that Israel received at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a “clean” funding bill that keeps the Department of Homeland Security open without picking a fight over immigration rules, and the announcement that marijuana is now legal in Washington, D.C.

In just a couple of years, the first human head transplant surgery is set to take place; a black hole 12 billion times the size of the sun is making scientists rethink a widely accepted theory; meanwhile, the Iranian version of street artist Banksy delves into “Iran’s turbulent past” with his work. These discoveries and more after the jump.